Richard Urban

<grin>

I see another one of Chad's posts has gone missing!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!



"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word
> for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> Quote from George Ankner:
> If you knew as much as you think you know,
> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>
>
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
>> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such
>> a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>> Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>> It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
>> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
>> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
>> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
>> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable
>> if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>> well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>> services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>> is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
>> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
>> leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
>> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
>> systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
>> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
>> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
>> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>> directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
>> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
>> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After
>> the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
>> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
>> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
>> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
>> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
>> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
>> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
>> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
>> their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
>> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
>> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
>> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>> search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
>> still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>> Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
>> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
>> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
>> the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>